D&D 4th Edition is JUST LIKE AN MMO

October 14, 2010

I bought my books and every month, in order to hold the books and play, a monthly fee comes out of my account.

Because it’s important to keep me playing or they don’t get any money, the first 10-20 hours of play are always about teaching me what the various things I see on my character sheet are, and I end up fighting rats for a week and collecting 100 pelts. I can only talk to certain characters and they always say the same things.

The optimal way to play is to go to the same sections on the map and do the same things over and over and over to maximize how fast I’m farming gold, experience points, and to get the best random drops.

Nothing I do ever has a permanent effect on the world.

Everyone goes through mostly the same adventures, so if I’m having a hard time, I can look up online exactly what I should do to win each section. After I’ve played a while, I need to organize a time to play with several dozens of people in order to even play a mission.

Because I’m forced to play with strangers, I have to listen to people who I’m supposed to be working with, fling racist, sexist, and homophobic slurs at me. The books don’t do anything about it, but if I try to play an openly gay character, the books take my money and and I can’t play anymore.

I pay to do this in my escapism.

When I stop paying, my books become unusable, and I cannot play.

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I feel like “D&D4 is an MMO” is the equivalent of “Obama is a socialist!”… a bunch of folks who don’t know what they’re mad at, or why, found a word they can use to fling randomly to say something is bad, without thinking about why, or what kind of games they DO prefer.